An alternate take on the Pathfinder drow, but one that is close enough the standard concept for parts of it to be easily used in campaigns not set in the world of Aventyr.

The book begins with the mythology of the Underdark and its creation. Although this does not deal heavily with the drow themselves, it is well written, and provides an interesting context to the race. This is likely useful stuff if you're using Aventyr (as is the idea), but it's the latter parts of the book that are likely to be most useful to those who are not.

Drow society is not described in depth, although there are the standard guidelines about alignment, adventurer origins, and so on for those playing drow as PCs. There are also traits modifying skills for male and female drow, to keep the two genders distinct, as well as bonuses for characters with particular favoured classes.

Almost half the book, however, is taken up with new rules for equipment, feats, magic items, and domain spells for use by drow. Although referred to, naturally enough, as a drow domain, the theme of the spells is, more generally, that of shadow and the shadow planes, and could therefore potentially be used by other races if they worship the right kind of deity.

On the whole, a good book, with some nice ideas for using the drow, and well-written with good artwork and layout.

A straight forward dungeon bash, with the only twist being that the inhabitants are gnomes rather than goblins or whatever. The scenario is written for 1st to 3rd level orc characters, but they could be anything, so long as they're evil. Change the gnomes to some other race, or tweak their alignments, and the PCs don't even have to be evil. (This would, naturally, require some alteration to the encounters, but to be honest, not very much.)

There is a page of advice at the end on how to play orcs, although it doesn't really address the question of 'evil' acts in play - orcs, it seems, aren't really all that different from some PCs, only a bit more cowardly.

It's all competently written up, well illustrated, and properly laid out. But at the end it's a dungeon bash no different from any other, and not quite as 'different' as it would like to be.

A two-page description of tavern, much of it written in terse sentences that look as if they were randomly generated by a computer. Physically, it looks very nice (although the more-or-less-random picture of a woman in her underwear manages to look sort of weird) but there is no real substance to it. The barkeeper has a description and stats, and a few patrons are listed, but there's no proper description of the tavern itself. It gets an extra star for the low price, but that's it.

A 17 page (plus cover) booklet giving brief descriptions of real-world European herbs, and the sort of things herbalists thought they were useful for. 47 herbs are listed, each with a short entry describing its appearance and where you can find it, and one or two sentences on its uses. It's nicely laid out, with good line drawings of most of the herbs. It's usefulness in game is, however, somewhat questionable, except maybe as inspiration for potion ingredients or something, or if you're playing a low-magic game with a herbalist PC.

A 31 page book (excluding cover, credits, and license), this describes a range of masks, from the mundane to the magical. The artwork is basic, but the book is well written, and includes a great variety of items. It begins with a list of twelve types of standard mask, which serve as a starting point for the later discussions, as well as an expansion to a typical equipment list.

After that, there are seven alchemical or mechanical masks, most of which duplicate more advanced technology (gas masks, diving masks, etc.) These are relatively cheap, and could well be useful, if your campaign allows such things - they could alternatively be replaced by something that uses simple magic to achieve its effects. Finally, there are sixteen magical items based on the mask theme, ranging from CLs of 3rd to 10th. With many of these, the fact that the item happens to be a mask is just a cool effect (albeit one that lets you the face slot for things you normally wouldn't), but others are directly linked to disguise, altered personae and the like.

The book rounds out with a description of a mask shop and its owner, which is well written, but fairly standard as shopping locations go.

All in all, I liked this book; it's an original idea for something a bit different, and easy to place in any campaign world. Some might prefer higher production values, but I can see this being useful enough that I'll give it 4.5/5.

A 14 page (plus cover, credits, and game license) booklet detailing a magical well in the wilderness. The idea is fairly original, although it's intended as no more than brief encounter to throw at your players, rather than a full adventure. Some encounter seeds are provided, along with stats for two of the residents, although it's unlikely any encounter would be heavy on combat unless your PCs really insist on it (it's not like there's any treasure to be looted, for instance). If they do insist, there are three different versions of the NPCs for varying levels of game, and some ideas at the end to make it tougher.

The layout is bland, although the one piece of art isn't bad. On the whole, pretty good for a dollar.

This is basically a floorplan for a one-room tavern, seemingly intended for a quasi-Victorian setting, although it's easy enough to adapt to any other. It's a nicely done line drawing, done as a single page version and a full-size one that can be fitted together from several pages, plus a GM key. There is also one page of text description, and a page detailing the barman and the serving girl, who are both interesting, with some plot hooks built into their backgrounds.

Nicely done, although it's more of a concept outline than a fully fledged location.

A 14 page guide to a small land along the shores of a great lake, with a further two pages dedicated to B&W and colour versions of a map of the region. It serves really as an introduction to a series of adventures - which, so far as I can tell, were never published.

Because of that, it's all rather vague. Although technically for the Iron Heroes system, it's actually all but system free, and so can easily be adapted to anything else. The only exception is the page or so on suggested PC traits, and even those are generic enough that they could be fitted to another character generation system without difficulty.

It's well written and coherent, with a good variety of settings within it, including dank fenlands, boisterous mining towns, pirate isles, scholarly and religious communities, and so on. The artwork is good too, although not extensive. On the other hand, the primary menace comes from the Bloodwood itself - which is never really described, presumably because that was the intended point of the adventures. It's really that, and the lack of anything particularly obvious to do that makes the product weak as a stand-alone.

I'll give it an extra star for being free, but, without the adventures, all you have here is the competently written outline of a fairly mundane region, under threat from something that's never described.

A 12-page booklet describing magical places within the world of Hellfrost, this could equally well serve as a source for any fantasy setting where magic can imbue the landscape. The first 4 pages or so are taken up a general discussion of sacred places and the incorporeal, otherworldly spirits that imbue them with power. These are not creatures to be killed, but sentient magical essences that can grant some kind of boon to visitors, usualy in return for a sacrifice.

This is followed by a description of thirteen such places, the nature of their spirits, and the powers they grant. Most are generally low-level, and there is a wide variety of different kinds, including divination, fertility, healing, and combat spells. They are all atmospheric, and should work in most settings. Finally, there is a description of the minor god of brewing, and of an undead monster.

This won't be of immense use if you're only interested in dungeon-style adventures, but otherwise it should be useful in most fantasy games. The rules for the sites and their powers are fairly minimal, and so should be easy to adapt if you happen to use a different system. High recommended if you're looking for a bit of magical flavour to make your world seem truly mythic.

This 31 page book (plus OGL, cover page, etc.) describes communities in standard fantasy settings, ranging from temporary labour encampments to metropolises - although the focus is mainly on cities. While I was rather less impressed with later volumes in the series, this first one is particularly good.

It opens with a general description of communities of various sizes, and how they might be affected by non-human populations and the like. Much of this is generic, but it seems well-researched, and provides a solid base to deviate from if your setting has particularly unusual features. This is followed by a brief look at common building types, and some more detailed examination of urban fortifications, law enforcement, and street lighting (or the lack thereof). There's also discussion of moving about in cities, addressing such things as rooftop chases and sewer delving - a staple in urban RPG settings.

Finally, there is a rather good 6-page section on civic disasters, covering things like flood, fire, famine, and plague. Any of these can radically upset a city and the lives of anyone resident within, and they can make dramatic backdrops for adventures, or just a sense of living in a real world. Again, a lot of this is well thought out.

The artwork is good, although some might want to note that 8 of the pages (a quarter of the total) are art-only, so that the text portion of the book is shorter than you might expect. What remains, though, is well worth the price.

A short adventure in which the PCs must explore a network of submerged lava tubes on the seabed to rescue a locathah prince. It's well written, and the while the scenario itself is, perhaps nothing extraordinary, the underwater setting gives it a fresh and original feel. Indeed, the background to the scenario suggests many more plot hooks for continued aquatic adventuring.

The artwork and map are top notch, and the writing and layout are very good, bringing the unusual setting to life. The scenario also includes a monster template, and a couple of spells that can apply it to existing creatures. (One minor point: aberrations aren't included in the template description, yet they were obviously supposed to be, judging from the example provided).

This 37-page book provides a description of five racial neighbourhoods for fantasy cities - one for each of the major races of dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and half-orcs. Each community comes with a description of the local architecture, it's social atmosphere, descriptions of characters and businesses likely to be encountered there, what magic is likely to be in use, and a selection of plot hooks.

The dwarven and halfling communities are both fairly typical, the sort of thing that might be found in any generic, multi-ethnic fantasy city. Either could be taken out of the city, and used as the basis for a town inhabited by that race, and general guidelines for how they live. Thought has been given as to how underground communities will be structured, and there are some rules guidelines for moving around in halfling-sized buildings.

The half-orc community is also generic - at least assuming that half-orcs aren't a social elite in your campaign world, which seems unlikely - but is more tied to the rest of the city. Much of the description here would work just as well for any slum area that's more frequented by beggars than it is by the Thieves' Guild.

The other two, however, are more specific. The elven neighbourhood is a scholarly retirement community, and the gnomish one a Vegas/Blackpool-style gambling district. Both make perfect sense, but, in most game worlds, they're likely not the typical elven or gnomish quarter, merely one example of a specialised variant. That doesn't make them less useful, and the material on how, for example, high-class casinos might work in a fantasy world, could well be handy whether or not gnomes are involved. But it's worth bearing in mind.

The book is well written, and passably illustrated, and includes a lot of useful ideas and rules that could apply further afield than the dwarven equivalent of Chinatown or Little Italy.

A description of a moderately large city, this supplement has 19 pages of text, and a further 10 pages of maps, plus the floorplan of a guardhouse. Six of the maps are of the city as a whole - with numbered labels, text labels, and no labels, each in colour and black-and-white. The remaining four are expanded versions of the main maps, each showing a quarter of the city, in larger size for printing, but without extra detail.

The city itself seems suited to a high fantasy world, due primarily to the vast scale of the architecture. The governor's palace, for instance, is ten stories high, and the city walls tower 300' (higher than the spires of many medieval cathedrals, in the real world). All of which is perfectly reasonable for a high fantasy setting - and the walls, in particular, are implied to partly magical in construction - but not, perhaps, for more low fantasy campaigns.

Having said that, a few tweaks to the descriptions is all you'd really need to change it. Beyond the architecture (which is atmospherically described) the basic concept of the city is that is largely ruled by three noble families that don't entirely get on, and that it is built on the ruins of a much older city, dedicated to the forces of evil before its eventual destruction. Unfortunately, not a lot is made of the latter point, it's more of a plot hook than something that is really explored in the supplement.

There are full page stat blocks of the heads of the three noble houses, the governor, the commander of the city guard, and the high priest of the main temple. All, except maybe the priest, seem surprisingly low level for the size of the city. (The population isn't given, but we know the guard force is 250-strong, so it's surprising that the guy in charge of it is only 4th level). But they are at least well thought out and distinctive.

A number of locations, including all the shops along one street, are given brief descriptions, which can add flavour to the setting. There are also discussions on some unusual local flora, a mildly narcotic drink (no worse than alcohol, really), and some unique architectural materials, as well as things like the sewers and the water supply. Again, some of this implies a high fantasy setting, but nothing too far out of the ordinary.

There is also a page of scenario ideas, some of which would work in any city, and some of which are more specifically tailored to this one.

All in all, not bad if you're looking for a fair sized, but not huge, city to put down in a fantasy campaign. The setting it is part of seems fairly generic, so there should be little difficulty in applying to most campaigns. The maps are reasonable, and the layout and proof-reading are both good. It doesn't, perhaps, have a true 'wow' factor, but it's quite good of its type.

A 15 page description of a mine and associated dwarven village, including 5 1/2 pages of maps. The maps are basic, drawn up in Campaign Cartographer, with a few minor mistakes like apparently floating mountains here and there, but they're functional and serve their purpose. The accompanying text is generally brief, with just a line or two per room, and the mine is clearly meant to be 'typical' rather than an adventure site in its own right. For example, while we're told where gold and so on are stored, there's no hint as to how much of it there is, or whether or not it might be protected.

The book rounds out with seven stat blocks for dwarven NPCs living at the site, with a short paragraph or two saying who they are. The layout of the book is minimal at best, with the NPCs, for example, blurring into one another due to a lack of clear headings. The book isn't bad, if what you want are the maps, and maybe some stats, but there's nothing much to it - although it's fair enough, for the low price.

This is a description of a dockside restaurant, such as could be found in almost any port city, or even one on a large river. Its 18 pages long, and very detailed for what it is - all the doors and locks are described, for instance, along with a 2-page description of the available menu. There are twelve named NPCs, with full stats and well-rounded descriptions, covering the restaurant's permanent staff and a few regular entertainers. There are also generic stats and descriptions for a host of patrons and temporary hire staff (serving girls, errand boys, etc.)

If what you want is a detailed description of a restaurant where PCs can meet up, or arrange meetings with potential employers, or whatever, this is likely pretty useful. But there are a few down points. For one, there's no map, which is surprising giving the level of attention to everything else - although the layout of the building is at least described in the text. Although the layout is good, there are a number of typos throughout, and the description of the entertainment room is missing altogether (and replaced with a description of the women's toilet).

In addition, at the end of the day, it is just a restaurant. There are no dark secrets hiding here, although there's potentially some money to steal if you're that way inclined. The characters are well-written, and believable, and therefore great as background NPCs, but that's all they are - if you're looking for urban adventure and mystery, this may not be for you. There are a couple of suggested plot hooks at the end, but they're minimal (one is just 'rob the place'), and don't add much to the product. There's also relatively little fantasy feel to it, apart from the presence of a single dwarf, although that may make it easier to fit into cities in almost any campaign.

On the plus side, 18 pages isn't bad for the price, which nudges it up to 4 stars.